I appreciate the reply, that’s really interesting. I struggle with conflicting muscle memory when I use one application a lot (GIMP) but then spend periods of time in other like Pixelmator and to a lesser degree Inkscape and Scribus.
I used Photoshop before it became subscription based. I found some things easier in GIMP and I’ve always been curious if that’s just because it’s familiar or because the workflow happened to be more intuitive.
Anyway, the design behind these programs themselves blows my mind.
Yeah, I haven’t used Krita much yet but apparently the developers made a decision to use Photoshop’s shortcuts, which is very pragmatic of them. In theory all applications could conform to a default keybinding scheme. I get the impression that the GIMP team are proud of GIMP having a unique identity though (which is why they also refuse to rename it even though lots of people want them to) and I quite like that.
I think that experience and familiarity are what makes complicated bits of software like this intuitive. I’ve been learning Ardour which is a heavyweight program for music production and was totally bewildered in the beginning. After learning it a bit though I realised how sensible the structure/layout is and how intuitive it now feels.
Especially considering that AFAIK Ardour is developed by two guys and does not have a massive userbase/income it’s absolutely shocking how good it is. I’m yet to discover a single bug and have probably only scratched the surface with it. For the scope, extensibility, capability and value I think that Ardour and GIMP are the best two pieces of software I’ve ever used, open source or otherwise.
I appreciate the reply, that’s really interesting. I struggle with conflicting muscle memory when I use one application a lot (GIMP) but then spend periods of time in other like Pixelmator and to a lesser degree Inkscape and Scribus.
I used Photoshop before it became subscription based. I found some things easier in GIMP and I’ve always been curious if that’s just because it’s familiar or because the workflow happened to be more intuitive.
Anyway, the design behind these programs themselves blows my mind.
Yeah, I haven’t used Krita much yet but apparently the developers made a decision to use Photoshop’s shortcuts, which is very pragmatic of them. In theory all applications could conform to a default keybinding scheme. I get the impression that the GIMP team are proud of GIMP having a unique identity though (which is why they also refuse to rename it even though lots of people want them to) and I quite like that.
I think that experience and familiarity are what makes complicated bits of software like this intuitive. I’ve been learning Ardour which is a heavyweight program for music production and was totally bewildered in the beginning. After learning it a bit though I realised how sensible the structure/layout is and how intuitive it now feels.
I used Ardour for about a year or two to produce a podcast. It’s so well polished and I preferred it to Logic Pro for that task at times.
Especially considering that AFAIK Ardour is developed by two guys and does not have a massive userbase/income it’s absolutely shocking how good it is. I’m yet to discover a single bug and have probably only scratched the surface with it. For the scope, extensibility, capability and value I think that Ardour and GIMP are the best two pieces of software I’ve ever used, open source or otherwise.